Looking for opinions on pp

Hello all,

I recently returned from a 5 month backpacking trip through South America.

Here is one photo from Peru of a woman. I quite liked the photo, but unfortunately background was very busy which I found took a lot away from it.

I attempted to replace the background with another photo that I took. I blurred the background to add separation.

I attempted to use some of the quicker, more advance methods that I read about, but I found that I could get the best results using the simple "clear" setting on the paintbrush to erase the top layer.

I find it still looks fake though, I am looking for suggestions on how to improve the photo.

Thanks for any help.

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My take personally: I love the original. I mean, check out the llama! It is sooo adorable. Plus, it is in every sense, the true environment of the shot. The background (although slightly busy) is OOF and no one in their right mind would NOT be drawn to the main subject (the llama right?).

The editted one does look fake. Probably needs a llama on a rooftoop at the very least.

I think I like the original "as is" background!

I think that the original is a great environmental portrait and you should not replace the background. Since the woman is backlit, I'd suggest you balance the lighting by using either a Shadow/Highlight adjustment to open up the shadows on her face and lower the luminosity of the background; or select her and use two Curves adjustment layers. One to increase the lighting on her, and the other to reduce the lighting in the background.

Thank you very much for the feedback.

I must be off to bed now, but tomorrow I will attempt some adjustments on the original.


Thanks again.

Perhaps something along these lines:

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Yeah, I love that original. The other background looks like it could be Southern California...

PixelMagic has it right!

Alrighty, here is an attempt to improve on the original.

The woman to the right of the photo in the original was driving me crazy. She looked as if she just smacked her head against that wall. I cropped the photo to.... remove the wall

Can you describe the process you used to get this result?

Crazy Horse wrote in post #9154366
*EDIT*
Odd, viewing this photo in Firefox, its seems to look horribly washed out. In Safari it looks much closer to how it does it Photoshop.

The colorspace of the photo attached to this comment is AdobeRGB. In web browsers that are not color managed this will result in the photo looking "washed out". When uploading to the web it's usually best to convert (not assign) the color profile to sRGB.

No color adjustments made.

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Since you mentioned it, I can't stop looking at the lady smacking her head. LOL.
I like the original too.